Content Gallery Plugin and WordPress 2.7
November 20, 2008 by Bill Robbins
One of my favorite plugins that is used on Organizedthemes.com and the Northridge Church and Crossgate Church themes is not compatible with the next version of WordPress. I am running a few mock up sites for my clients with WordPress 2.7 Beta 3 when I noticed that I could not get the Featured Content Gallery to save any settings. I checked and Jason Schuller, the plugins author, and said he is aware of the problem and will have a fix available in the next version of the plugin. He also said that there will be lots of new features that everyone will be pleased with.
The bottom line is, if you are depending on this plugin as I am, don’t upgrade to WordPress 2.7 when it becomes available until the Featured Content Gallery plugin is fixed.
This plugin has now been fixed. You can find out more and download it here.
Keeping Track of Visitors
November 18, 2008 by Bill Robbins
Once your website is up and running, you will no doubt be curious about how many people are visiting and what they are interested in and what they are not. So how do you find this out? As is often the case, there are several WordPress plugins out there that can help you learn all kinds of information about your visitors. We can all celebrate that all of these services are free. Let’s see what stats tools are out there for you to use.
1. WordPress.com Stats. This plugin is made by Automatic the company behind WordPress. It requires you to create a free account at WordPress.com and get an API key which you will find under your user profile. (This is the same key you use for Akismet comment spam if you use that service). Once you’ve downloaded the plugin here and installed it, it will begin collecting information on all visitors who are not logged in. That is a consideration if you plan on having people who are a part of your community sign into accounts on your site when they visit. You will not have a record of their visits, what they read, how long the stayed, or how many pages they saw during their visit.
The WordPress.com Stats plugin provides basic information about visitors to your site. It adds a small stats panel to your dashboard that looks like this.
Click Here to See a Larger Picture of the WordPress Stats Dashboard
It also adds a link to your admin called “Blog Stats” where you can get into more detail about visitors, search terms, trends and so forth.
2. Google Analytics. The amount of free services that Google offers is truly staggering. I use analytics on Organized Themes because I find the details it provides quite helpful. One of the interesting features is the mapping of your site’s visitors.
Click the Image to See a Larger Picture
You can see where your visitors are coming from, actually from anywhere on the planet. It breaks visits down by country and then into state and/or city. When I started this site, I never dreamed that churches beyond the US, much less beyond the English speaking world, would have an interest in my site and themes, but people have visited from over 50 countries. To be honest, that just blows me away.
I also use Google Adwords for advertising and analytics connects into my adwords dashboard providing me with even more information. It’s easy to see how many of my visitors are there because of an add that I placed versus finding this site by more traditional means. Google also provides suggestions on how to improve your site so that you get a better rank in search listings. Since Google is the king of search engines, we all want to take their advise on how to improve rankings in their system.
You can find out more about Google Analytics and how to install it here.
3. StatPress. This is a simple plugin that provides basic information about number of visitors, page views and more. What it offers is a glimpse of not only actual visitors, but search engine spiders and RSS feeds from your site. While I still recommend using Feedburner for your RSS feeds, you can get a quick indication of new subscribers and total number of subscribers.
Click Here to See a Large Picture
The information on spiders is useful because both analytics and WordPress Stats don’t provide it and it lets you know that search engines are checking the content on your site for updates. If they aren’t checking, then you probably aren’t going to be listed very highly. You can download StatPress here.
There are other options out there, but these three will get you started. I should note, that it will take some time for all of these systems to gather information, so don’t expect much in the way of useful information on day one. Give it a bit of time and watch as trends develop. Then you will be able to make more meaningful strategic decisions.
Introducing Revolution Two
October 29, 2008 by Bill Robbins
As you may have noticed, I don’t charge a fee for my themes. Initially I had planned to do just that, but I changed my mind after Brian Gardner announced he would be offering a new set of themes under a GPL open source license. I learned about designing WordPress sites from Brian’s original Revolution themes, which incidentally, I had to pay quite a bit for.
What I didn’t understand at the time was that this was not keeping with the free, open source spirit of WordPress. This wonderful blog and content management system is offered free of charge, no strings attached to anyone who wants to use it. Not only that is regularly updated and improved. WordPress is not the only CMS of this type that is free, but the only ones that rival it’s quality are not free.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made to offer my themes for free and only charge if people require my expertise in customizing a theme, for hosting or having something custom created. It keeps me in line with the broader community of WordPress and that is important for the continued growth and development of that community.
Go by and visit Revolution 2. If you like any of those themes, I’d be glad to help you with any customization or support you might need to use them or any of the themes I’ve created here.
iPhone WordPress Theme
October 23, 2008 by Bill Robbins
Anyone who is running a website these days needs to be aware that lots of people will be viewing your site from devices other than a desktop computer. Most people (myself included) that own an iPhone talk about how it changes your life. Once upon a time I took my laptop into the backyard to do a bit of work while my kids played. Now I usually just grab my iPhone and I can accomplish pretty much the same amount of work that way. People are using iPhones, iPod Touches, Blackberry’s, Windows Mobile and other devices to see our sites, so we need to ask ourselves “how do our sites look and function on these devices?”
I love the look of Flash, because it can do so many great animations and user interfaces, but it doesn’t work on the mobile browser on my iPhone. Most of the time this limitation doesn’t bother me–it’s often just filler. But lots of sites out there use flash for navigation. I’m leading the children’s ministry at a new church plant and we use a curriclulumn from a company called Kidmo. We are so pleased with the quality of their materials, but their site uses a lot of Flash, so I can’t use it on my phone.
To help all of us with WordPress based sites out, Dale and Duane from BraveNewCode.com have created a plugin for WordPress that uses a different theme when the site is viewed from a mobile browser. This theme has your site name at the top with a pulldown menu of your pages on the right. A search feature is also clearly marked at the top of the page. Then comes a list of your most recent posts. If you have an iPhone or a touch you can see an example of this by looking at my site.
One reason why mobile browsers are so important for churches is helping potential visitors out. If someone has a hard time finding your church and they have one of these devices they will likely use it for help. If they can’t use your site or find the information they need because of poor formatting, they might not visit.
It may seem obvious, but most of us don’t make websites that only we will look at. We make ones that we hope will benefit others in some way. This plugin is easy to use and helps people better access your content. What else do you need? So head over to BraveNewCode.com and download it today.
Why Good Communication is Necessary
October 16, 2008 by Bill Robbins
As some of you know, my family and I are helping to plant a new church in Birmingham, AL. We were preparing for a publicity blitz this coming Sunday afternoon and as part of that I had some door hangers printed up. I used a company that greatly emphasizes their 48 hour turn around time so that I could have the hangers by Friday afternoon with only 2 day air shipping. I placed the order on their website, uploaded the pdf’s with no trouble and went on my merry way. The site is well designed and functional so ordering was no problem.
Well the hangers did not ship on Wednesday as their 48 hour guarantee told me they would. So I opened a support ticket for some help. I promptly received a call saying they were closed on Monday and that delayed printing a day. As a result I would need to pay an additional $57 to receive the hangers on time.
The problem is no where on their front page, or any of their order pages did the site say they were closed on Monday, the day I ordered the door hangers. I went through their site and the only place it mentions it is on their contact page. In effect they won’t tell you when they are closed until you have a problem with something.
This brings up the importance of anticipation and good communication. We all need to anticipate what kind of information visitors to our websites will need and provide it to them in an upfront and clear way. Churches should provide clear links for people to find directions, service times and ideally at least a page dedicated to helping them understand what to expect when they come to your church.
My 48 Hour experience reiterates the need to think through our communication plan clearly from the point of view of a guest. Otherwise they may have a regrettable experience at your church that could have been prevented with a bit more forethought.
Write me a comment below with some good examples of church website communication and any bad ones you can think of.
Plugins to Help Your Church Website
October 10, 2008 by Bill Robbins
While WordPress is a great platform to run your website, it doesn’t have all of the features you probably want in a modern church website. It’s nice to know you can expand the functionality with some of the 3,000 or so plugins that wordpress.org offers. The question is which ones can help you out of all of those.
To make your website the best it can I’ve put together a list of the most useful WordPress plugins for churches. I’m certain that there are many others that could make the list, but these make a great starting place.
Podcasting: We have been using the PodPress plugin for some time and have been generally pleased with it. What you want to provide in Podcasting is a way for people to subscribe to your messages in iTunes, but still be able to download them individually without using iTunes. PodPress does this well, plus it lets people listen to the message inside of the post without saving it to their computer. You can download PodPress here as well as learn more about it.
Contact Form: There are numerous contact forms for WordPress available out there. I like cformsII quite a bit for several reasons. It allows you to have multiple forms which is especially handy if you need several sign ups for events or contacts or some other purpose. Plus it comes with several built in styles that can be adapted to fit the feel of your website. It allows you to specify what information you collect and whether responses are required or not. You can put initial information into the form that gets cleared out when someone clicks on it. It is very professional in appearance. You can download here.
Content Gallery: Most churches have lots of information that they are trying to communicate. Add to that the relatively small space that makes up the front of any church website and you have a disaster waiting to happen. A great way to get around this is with some sort of content rotator. Lots of these are available for use with Flash. Flash looks great, but it tends to be slow and is often inaccessible. If someone views your site on an iPhone, the content stored in Flash might as well not be there. Content Gallery is a slick plugin for WordPress that uses a technology called javascript to create an image rotator that links to specific posts on your site. It’s easy to set up and the effect is great. I use it on the front of www.organizedthemes.com to highlight themes and services we offer. Some of my clients use it to showcase upcoming messages as well as large church-wide announcements. You can learn more about Content Gallery and download it here.
Newsletters: Many churches like to send out regular newsletters to keep their congregations up to date with what is happening at the church. There is a fantastic plugin called MailPress that allows you to use WordPress to run your email campaigns. This is a full featured plugin that allows you to send emails to all users, or just a select number of them. It also allows you to style the email to look like your website to keep your style consistent. We’ll go into more depth soon about what the ins and outs of a good email campaign. You can learn more about MailPress and download it here.
Calendar: What church doesn’t have some calendar of upcoming events? Even if it’s just the weekly services, something is planned just about all the time. One of the best ways a church website can help out a congregation is through the use of an online calendar. WordPress does have a variety of plugins that can help you in this regard, most of them do have their limitations. Right now we are setting people up with WPListCal by Jonathan Kern. You can find out more about the plugin and download it here. This plugin will allow you to keep an online calendar of upcoming events. It doesn’t set recurring events, so it’s better suited special or one time meetings than weekly gatherings. One thing this plugin does well is produce a list of upcoming events that you can easily feature on your homepage or in your sidebar.
WordPress is a fantastic tool to manage your website’s content. I hope that with these plugins it will be even more useful to your church or ministry than it is now. Part of its great flexibility is its ability to adapt and stretch through the use of great plugins and themes. Here at www.organizedthemes.com we are committed to helping you make the best use of all these tools.
To make sure you stay on top of all the developments in WordPress and the web that affect your church’s website, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed here.
What is the purpose of a church website?
October 8, 2008 by Bill Robbins
It really is remarkable just how much the Internet has changed our culture and our lives. Just yesterday I found myself blocked in by a broken down freight train with no idea of how to get past. If this had happened in April I’d probably still be stuck there. But now I pulled out my iPhone and used Google maps to find a way around.
We rarely go anywhere or do anything without first checking the net. Why should we expect it to be any different when people are looking for a church?
Most people, especially those under 40, are going to make your church website the first spot they check out first when they consider your church. They are going to need directions and service times, but they are going to want to know who your church is and what you are all about. This gets communicated through the language you choose to express yourself as well as the layout, colors and graphics you choose. All of these together should reflect what your church’s vision and purpose is.
So one of the main purposes of a church website is to inform potential visitors about your church.
A second major purpose is to provide an information hub for your congregation. Church websites that are consistently updated are a great resource for their congregations. I say frequently updated because all too often churches have a site that is set up for them, but there is no way for the staff to update them. So this site that was incredible the week it was launched seems out of touch two months later and is really an embarrassment at the six months mark. How often does a church have an online registration for an event that has passed still on prominent display on their front page?
If they don’t have a web programmer on staff who could blame them?
But now any church can have a website that they can easily maintain using WordPress and one of the themes we offer here, or by adapting some of the literally thousands of other themes that are out there.
It’s not enough to have a website, or even one that looks good. It has to be updated both for potential guests and your congregation. Check back to www.organizedthemes.com or subscribe to our RSS feed as we get into the nuts and bolts of everything it takes to run a top notch church website.
Instructions
September 8, 2008 by Bill Robbins
Thank you for choosing a theme from Organized Themes. The following instructions will help you get started.
Installation
Here are the instructions to install any Organized Themes on your website.
- Download the latest version of WordPress from www.wordpress.org/download.
- Use your ftp client to upload your wordpress into a folder on your web server. Many web hosts provide ftp access through their control panels. If you don’t have a web host we can provide hosting for your site. Click here to learn more.
- Set up a new MySQL database in the control panel of your website to run your WordPress installation.
- Write down the database name, username, password, and address (if given) to use in the installation.
- Visit your website and follow the instructions to install WordPress.
- If you run into any trouble visit this site to learn more about WordPress installations.
- Use your ftp client to browse to the wp-content folder. Open it up.
- Upload your theme into the “themes” folder.
- Upload the included plugins into the “plugins” folder.
- Go back to your WordPress Dashboard. Open the plugins page (the link is in the top right of every page).
- Activate the plugins that are included with your Organized Themes site by clicking on the link that says “activate.”
- Open the “Design” page and click on “themes.”
- Select the theme that you purchased and click activate in the pop-up window that opens.
Your installation is now complete. We just need to customize some settings and you can begin uploading your content.